The Good Terrorist - Doris May Lessing [146]
Jasper and Bert came back, ready for hot baths and food. They had gone down to Nottingham to join the pickets in a miners’ strike. It had rained and was cold. Roberta and Faye were starving, they said when they returned. Faye had colour in her cheeks again; she had rejoined the living, and was amusingly and enliveningly her cockney self. Roberta, so happy that her love was better, showed a side of herself they had not seen. She sang, very well, in a full, controlled contralto, first some workers’ songs, then a whole range of songs from the Portuguese, from Spanish, from Russian. It turned out that she had been trained to sing, but she had found her niche with the revolution.
There was enough wine, and everyone got tight. Mary and Reggie did not appear.
They were all going up to bed, at about two in the morning, when there was a low, hurried knock at the front door.
“My God, the police,” shrieked Alice and rushed to confront them. But it was not the police. Two young men shouldering large packages stood there, smiling, bent sideways from the weight.
“What’s that? You can’t bring those here,” said Alice, knowing what was happening, all her pleasure in the evening gone, feeling chilled and apprehensive.
“Come on, now,” said one, Irish as they make them. “We were told to leave these here.”
“It’s a mistake,” said Alice.
But he had slid the package onto the hall floor and gone off, while his fellow, grinning bashfully, let his load slide off.
“You have to take them back,” said Alice. “Do you understand?” They had both gone down the path, and she could see them standing by a small shabby van. They were conferring, turning to check the house number with a piece of paper. Alice arrived beside them and said, “You haven’t understood. This stuff shouldn’t be left here! You must take it away again.”
“Ah, well now, but that’s easily said,” said the one who had spoken before. He sounded injured. More, afraid. He even glanced around into the shadowy gardens, and then out into the main road, where the traffic was thinner but still moving. It was a dark night, damp. The three stood close together under the street light and argued.
Alice said that this was the wrong house, and the house they wanted, number 45, was no longer safe to leave anything at.
They said that they had been told number 43.
“You have got to take them away.”
“And we will not!”
She imagined that she heard a window going up behind her and turned to stare up into the darkened top of the house opposite Joan Robbins, and while she did this the two men took the opportunity to nip into the van. She had to stand aside quickly to avoid being run over.
“Oh no,” she wailed into the dark, watching the little van dart off to the corner and turn out of sight. “No, it simply isn’t on. It’s not fair.”
She stood there, helpless, feeling that things had gone out of control. Then thought that she should go in, in case any nosy neighbour was awake and interested. Slowly she went indoors. The two cartons, as smooth and bland as two brown pebbles, stood there in the hall with nothing on them to announce their contents.
On the stairs stood Jasper and Bert, staring, disconsolate. Also, rather drunk. Above them, Jocelin. Roberta and Faye had gone off into their room. Caroline was still clearing up in the kitchen.
“We can’t have these here,” appealed Alice, to the men, but it was Jocelin who leaped down past them, and said only, “Up into the attic.” As the two women laboured up past the men on the stairs, they came to and helped. First one very heavy carton and then the other were stowed in a far corner